Big Data is “nonsense”: Dr Robin Bloor

Posted by: Lach James

Known for his unique and controversial views on the business analytics industry, respected technology analyst, Dr Robin Bloor, has described the terms ‘Big Data’ and ‘Data Scientist’ as “nonsense” in a recent interview with Business Intelligence (BI) vendor Yellowfin.

But why does Bloor hold this position on the industry’s most prevalent topic? Watch the video recording of the interview to find out.

Interview questions

*Your keynote had an interesting title – Big Data with a question mark after it. Are you a Big Data skeptic?

*Where do you see the consumerization of BI fitting in regards to the emergence of Big Data and new data sources?

*From your keynote speech, can we conclude that you believe the term “democratization of data” is invalid?

*Broadly speaking, why do you think that increasing numbers of organizations are turning to BI to improve operations and strategic planning?

Dr Robin Bloor was the first keynote speaker at Think Tank 2014 – Yellowfin’s annual global BI conference. Bloor’s Big Data? presentation first examined the technology trends in IT, looking back over decades, to explain how we got where we are today. It then reviewed the dramatic changes that have been occurring in computer technology – particularly hardware – to explain why, suddenly, everyone is obsessed with Big Data. Finally it explored the consumerization of BI.

Bloor’s presentation covered topics including:

The ‘Big Data curve’ and what it means

Disruption in computer hardware technology

Technology revolutions from the mainframe to the Internet of Things

Data flow and software architecture

The analogy of the biological system to BI

The ‘Data Scientist’

Latencies in BI and why they matter

The consumerization of BI

About Robin Bloor

An in-demand speaker and author, Bloor has published many papers and several books, including his best-selling business book The Electronic Bazaar: From the Silk Road to the eRoad, which was featured as book of the week by Times and referred to as "a classic" by Publisher’s Weekly.

Bloor is the Chief Analyst at Bloor Research, a US media savvy enterprise IT analysis, research and publishing firm he co-founded in 2010. He was also the founder (in 1989) of the UK technology analysis company Bloor Research.